The Yellow Wallpaper Feminist Essay

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” tells the story of a woman suffering from post-partum depression, undergoing the sexist psychological treatments of mental health, that took place during the late nineteenth century. The narrator in Gilman’s story writes about being forced to do nothing, and how that she feels that is the worst possible treatment for her. In this particular scene, the narrator writes that she thinks normal work would do her some good, and that writing allows her to vent, and get across her ideas that no one seems to listen to. Gilman’s use of the rhetorical appeal pathos, first-person point of view, and forceful tone convey her message that confinement is not a good cure for mental health, and that writing,

     The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a fictionalized autobiographical account that illustrates the emotional and intellectual deterioration of the female narrator who is also a wife and mother. The woman, who seemingly is suffering from post-partum depression, searches for some sort of peace in her male dominated world. She is given a “rest cure” from her husband/neurologist doctor that requires strict bed rest and an imposed reprieve form any mental stimulation. As a result of her husband’s controlling edicts, the woman develops an obsessive attachment to the intricate details of the wallpaper on her bedroom wall. The woman’s increasingly intense obsession with

  The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman can by read in many different ways.  Some think of it as a tragic horror story while others may find it to be a tale of a woman trying to find her identity in a male-dominated society.  The story is based on an episode in Gilman's life when she suffered from a nervous disease called melancholia.  A male specialist advised her to "live a domestic a life as far as possible.. and never to touch a pen, brush or pencil..."   (Gilman, 669).   She lived by these guidelines for three months until she came close to suffering from a nervous breakdown.  Gilman then decided to continue writing, despite the physicians advice, and overcame her illness.

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is about a creative woman whose talents are suppressed by her dominant husband. His efforts to oppress her in order to keep her within society's norms of what a wife is supposed to act like, only lead to her mental destruction. He is more concerned with societal norms than the mental health of his wife. In trying to become independent and overcome her own suppressed thoughts, and her husbands false diagnosis of her; she loses her sanity. One way the story illustrates his dominance is by the way he, a well-know and

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892, is a great example of early works pertaining to feminism and the disease of insanity. Charlotte Gilman’s own struggles as a woman, mother, and wife shine through in this short story capturing the haunting realism of a mental breakdown.The main character, much like Gilman herself, slips into bouts of depression after the birth of her child and is prescribed a ‘rest cure’ to relieve the young woman of her suffering. Any use of the mind or source of stimulus is strictly prohibited, including the narrator’s favorite hobby of writing. The woman’s husband, a physician, installs into his wife that the rest treatment is correct and will only due harm if not followed through. This type of treatment ultimately drives the woman insane, causing her to envision a woman crawling behind the yellow wallpaper of her room. Powerlessness and repression the main character is subject to creates an even more poignant message through the narrator’s mental breakdown. The ever present theme of subordination of women in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is advanced throughout the story by the literary devices of symbolism, imagery, and allegory.

The structure of the text, particularly evident in the author’s interactions with her husband, reveals the binary opposition between the façade of a middle-class woman living under the societal parameters of the Cult of Domesticity and the underlying suffering and dehumanization intrinsic to marriage and womanhood during the nineteenth century. While readers recognize the story for its troubling description of the way in which the yellow wallpaper morphs into a representation of the narrator’s insanity, the most interesting and telling component of the story lies apart from the wallpaper. “The Yellow Wallpaper” outwardly tells the story of a woman struggling with post-partum depression, but Charlotte Perkins Gilman snakes expressions of the true inequality faced within the daily lives of nineteenth century women throughout the story. Although the climax certainly surrounds the narrator’s overpowering obsession with the yellow wallpaper that covers the room to which her husband banished her for the summer, the moments that do not specifically concern the wallpaper or the narrator’s mania divulge a deeper and more powerful understanding of the torturous meaning of womanhood.

and "gates that lock". At the top of the stairs is a gate that keeps

  "The Yellow Wallpaper," written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the late nineteenth century, explores the dark forbidding world of one woman's plunge into a severe post-partum depressive state. The story presents a theme of the search for self-identity. Through interacting with human beings and the environment, the protagonist creates for herself a life of her own.

     The short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman gives a brilliant description of the plight of the Victorian woman, and the mental agony that her and many other women were put through as "treatment" for depression when they found that they were not satisfied by the life they had been given.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and illustrates many patriarchal and feminist views. We see the very strict gender roles that the characters seem to be confined in. John is confined to the idea that males are to be the head of the household, decisive and rational thinkers. The narrator, on the other hand, is tied to her gender role of being submissive to her husband and not questioning his judgement. She constantly tries to break these rules by suggestion ideas to her husband, but he dismisses her without thought. When the narrator first notices the yellow wallpaper in the bedroom and asks if they can replace it John simply tells her that she was just letting the wallpaper get the best of her and if the wallpaper

The yellow wallpaper has a lot of Feminist .The yellow wallpaper was male-run establishment and the patriarchal (Controlled by man) structure in the nineteenth century households. Prior to the twentieth century men had assigned and defined roles for women. Most of the woman that had suffered were the middle class. Men had the so called power to overrule the woman. In the poem the yellow wallpaper it’s about this woman that is driven to madness as a result of a Victorian ‘rest-cure’. The rest cure involves the isolation of family and friends and that’s what she had.

     In the late nineteenth century, after the American social and economic shift commonly referred to as the "Industrial Revolution" had changed the very fabric of American society, increased attention was paid to the psychological disorders that apparently had steamed up out of the new smokestacks and skyscrapers in urban populations (Bauer, 131).  These disorders were presumed to have been born out of the exhaustion and "wear and tear" of industrial society (Bauer, 131-132).  An obvious effect of these new disorders was a slew of physicians and psychiatrists advocating one sort of cure or another, although the "rest cure" popularized by the physician S. Weir Mitchell was the most

Sexists have always considered women as weak, but pre-women’s rights movement this was a general belief. Gilman depicts the marginalization of women, especially those claiming mental illness, in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Through the treatment of the protagonist, the “woman” behind the wallpaper, and the “freedom” of the mentally afflicted, the outlook of the world on the female gender is observed.

Everyone experiences life, whether it be happy times, bad times; it’s one big circle every human being goes through. In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper," which is a feminist story that portrays the terror of the rest cure which is a period spent in inactivity or leisure with the intention of improving one 's physical or mental health. Women especially, as it opposes many challenges that affects many female lives all over the world. The story, which who was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a well known American journalist, and a female icon who fights for what she believes in; women 's rights. The author who has gone through the traumatizing, life changing effects of this “rest cure.” The Yellow Wallpaper can be looked as this gothic horror story, and also a feminist parable, which gives us the idea that portrays the woman forced to obey her husband by all means, which causes her downfall to her mental sufferings.

In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman features the female stereotype that a woman can not be a “true woman” unless she is domestic and submissive to her husband. The narrator begins to feel unlike herself after having a child, so her husband insists that she simply needs to get away from everything to get better. He sets up rules and restrictions for her to follow and coddles her like a child, which ultimately leads to her spiral into insanity. The narrator challenges this prescription by going against her husband’s wishes and breaking free. Male control over women is a common social issue during the time of this story, as men were seen as protectors and necessary to the success of women. These ideas are challenged by Sojourner Truth in her speech “Ain't I a Woman?.” Truth uses her experience as a slave to go against these traditional ideas of women as helpless and voiceless. She has to be strong, work hard, and is unable to be a mother to her children, which makes her wish she could have the same opportunities as the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” She frees herself from slavery and goes on to fight against the deprivation of her basic human rights. Both texts acknowledge the oppression of women based on their authors’ experiences and show a burning desire to overcome these stereotypes and change the way women are treated by men and viewed in society.